Hey everyone. I have a problem while streaming. As an audio novice I don't know what to do about the speaking volume is too low while when a action scene
plays the volume booms. I'm running sound from an
Nvidia 8500GT to a 20 watt amp and 20 watt tabletop
speakers. No equalizer. The Nvidia graphics card has
no equalizer built in . I don't enough about freqs. or decibels to begin to know how to approach my problem. If someone could point me to past threads or
give me advice it would be great! By the way the amp
I have is just a simple audio in audio out no gain
Thanks

Hey everyone. I have a problem while streaming. As an audio novice I don't know what to do about the speaking volume is too low while when a action scene
plays the volume booms. I'm running sound from an
Nvidia 8500GT to a 20 watt amp and 20 watt tabletop
speakers. No equalizer. The Nvidia graphics card has
no equalizer built in . I don't enough about freqs. or decibels to begin to know how to approach my problem. If someone could point me to past threads or
give me advice it would be great! By the way the amp
I have is just a simple audio in audio out no gain
Thanks

When you say "no gain", I assume you mean there is no volume control, which means it is just a power amplifier. It does have gain, but it is not adjustable.

I assume you are using the volume control of your sound card to control the volume.

Many if not most movies are mixed at the studio so the speaking volume gets drowned out by the "background' music or traffic noise or sound effects.

Everyone has this problem, and the moron sound engineers are so in love with their sound effects etc. that the soundtrack is screwed up, and it is very hard to do much with it.

Better speakers might help a lot, but only trying some will tell you.

A cheap 20 watt amplifier is not going to give you much in the way of dynamics or clarity with most speakers, either.

You can get a pair of Dayton B652 speakers from Parts Express for under $40, and they are very good; way better than most speakers for under $200. You might want to try them out. They really are amazingly good.

I have a pair of them in my den with a 60-inch Sony HDTV and a 50 watt Cambridge amplifier, and the sound is very good.

The amp I have has a volume control but that's it.
I have as I found out a built in equalizer for the Realtek HD audio. I thought it might help to control
the db's up to make voices more audible . But as I said I am truly ignorant in this field. Besides that the Realtek HD equalizer has 10 bands but not listed in db's band 1 is 31 band 2 doubles to 62 and so on up to
band 10 which is 16K. I do agree that better speaker
would help. Mine are Radio Shack not the cheapest but
than again nothings cheap at Radio shack. Still made
overseas. What isn't! I thank you.

Many if not most movies are mixed at the studio so the speaking volume gets drowned out by the "background' music or traffic noise or sound effects.

Everyone has this problem, and the moron sound engineers are so in love with their sound effects etc. that the soundtrack is screwed up, and it is very hard to do much with it.

Better speakers might help a lot, but only trying some will tell you.

I agree, soundtracks are usually mixed so that voices are at the correct volume when the soundtrack is played back at "reference level" volume - but this is louder than many people want to listen and louder than some speaker systems are capable or sound good at.

Most with an AVR use "dynamic range compression" or other DSP modes that even out the volume by making the loudest sounds quieter and the quietest sounds louder - reducing the dynamic range. Your sound card may have some of these features.

Many of us will also boost the channel level / trim of the center channel so that dialog - which mostly come from the center channel - is louder.

The other problem is that many center channel speakers don't have the right design, wide enough frequency response, or enough volume without excessive distortion. A lot of people have experienced a better center channel speaker improving dialog intelligibility (including me). What kind of center channel speaker are you using?

As was suggested in an earlier reply to my thread ,
Yesterday I ordered new speakers, not top shelf stuff
but a big improvement over these little boxes I have.
Got two satellite and a center speaker. I built another
amp at 60 watts. I live in an apartment so I can't go
over board. Will let you guys know how it goes if that's ok. Thanks